According to Edgar Wright, the flavour of the cornettos featured in the unofficial ‘Three Flavours Cornetto’ trilogy represents the motif of that film. The red or strawberry flavour in Shaun of the Dead represents blood and zombies, while the blue/original flavour of Hot Fuzz represents the police force. The green/peppermint of The World’s End represents science fiction and extraterrestrial elements.

Each film in the trilogy is connected to a Cornetto ice cream, with a Cornetto of the appropriate flavour appearing in each film. Shaun of the Dead features a strawberry-flavoured Cornetto, which signifies the film’s bloody and gory elements, Hot Fuzz includes the blue original Cornetto, to signify the police element to the film, and The World’s End features the green mint chocolate chip flavour in a nod to aliens and science fiction. While the first two films include appearances of the ice cream itself, the last incorporates only the appearance of the wrapper.

Can you recommend any books/movies with queerplatonic life partners? Or just centering around friendships which are shown to be just as good as romantic relationships. If I read another romance novel I'm going to throw up.

There’s a lot out there, so any readers with suggestions are welcome to join in. I’ll restrict myself to books/movies I’ve actually read or seen.

Isaac Asimov’s robot trilogy is excellent - The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn. It’s focused on detective work / sci-fi, but I really like the development of the protagonists’ friendship. I think there’s a romance sideplot in the second novel, can’t recall offhand, but it fizzles out.

Good Omens has some one-off jokes about the main characters being mistaken for a gay couple, and two of the side characters get romantically paired up, but friendship is the solid core of the story, and it gets much more importance in the plot.

P.G. Wodehouse’s “Jeeves” stories tend to portray romance as silly and more trouble than it’s worth, which is refreshing when you’re annoyed by romantic tripe everywhere else. The TV show based on the books, Jeeves and Wooster, is just as good. Plus it has Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry being best buddies.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is 1) ludicrously long, 2) a dense read, 3) a wonderful story if you’re up to the challenge, and 4) about as romantic as a Venus fly trap. Don’t be fooled by the name. Friendship is celebrated in this book, to the point that it’s hard to read a lot of relationships as anything but queerplatonic in modern terms.

Irresponsible Captain Tylor is an old, obscure anime that’s close to my heart. It does have romantic elements, but they’re just jokes, and it’s the friendship among the characters that really matters.

Can’t forget the Cornetto Trilogy: Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End. Very much friendship-centered; Hot Fuzz focuses on two friends’ relationship while The World’s End is centered on a group. Funny, absurd, but at times oddly touching.

Many of Hayao Miyazaki’s movies have little or no romance. Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke have none, and develop the characters’ friendships instead. They’re splendid.

Watch the original The Producers movie. Not the remake. It’s…just watch it. Seriously. And don’t let anyone spoil it for you. Don’t even read a teaser blurb of it if you can help it. But if you want a beautiful friendship, boy, does this movie have one.

If you play along with the mirroring game at all, you’re familiar with the John/Mayfly Man mirroring. It’s, like, mirroring 101. And makes ridiculous treatises like this possible. Have you taken a good look at this one scene at the end of TSOT though? The one time when John and the Mayfly Man are on camera together, exchanging dialogue? We’re going to just fully descend into crack madness today. I promise you, it’ll be brilliant.

Let’s just start with the relevant dialogue from this scene:

Sherlock: “Jonathan Small. Today’s substitute wedding photographer, known to us as the Mayfly Man. … Johnny sought revenge on Sholto…”

Jonathan Small.

Jonathan.

Small.

Jonathan.

Small.

“Oh, audience, do you not see the point that I, Mark Gatiss, am hitting you over the head with yet? Here, let me call him Johnny. Yes, I know that Sherlock never gives people nicknames and that it’s 100% out of character for him to call him Johnathan and then switch to Johnny 5 seconds later. That’s the point.”

“…still no? My, aren’t we slow! Here, let me have John cross right in front of the Mayfly Man right as we’re talking about how Johnny planned Sholto’s ‘murder’.”

“…still no? Quite honestly, dear audience, I don’t know how else I can help you. I’m writing with the subtlety of a lead brick here. Would it help if I just called him Metaphor Short-Stature instead? Or should we save that for Series 4?” (and Mark gets a dreamy look in his eyes and stares off into the middle distance)

Well that’s great, we’ve just sent imaginary Mark Gatiss off to his happy place. We won’t be able to disturb him for a while. In the meantime, let me just take this moment to formally introduce you to Metaphor Short-Stature.

A few of us in the glitterati squad ( elizabeth-twist, monikakrasnorada, roseinmyhand, hotdiggitydollie, queenmab3, hopelesslybenaddicted, & iamjohnlocked4life) were shooting the shit one day, about six months ago, about the ridiculousness of this scene. How, clearly, the Mayfly Man has nothing to do with John Watson. Except for his entire subtextual arc, the staging and the camera work, and oh yeah, even his fucking name. We left Jonathan Small behind as we started speculating about the qualities of Metaphor Short-Stature. Like all magical beings, he began to take on a life of his own. We quickly concluded that Metaphor Short-Stature must be the metaphorical anti John Watson.

In other words, Metaphor Short-Stature is our Anti-Trash Prince.

He makes tea. He loves buying the milk. He loves waking up at 4 AM to the violin. He never rage sniffs. He dances with the curtains open. He’s never even heard of the concept of no homo. MSS doesn’t mind putting his hand on your knee. He won’t complain about gently running his hand up your inner thigh. He’s just fine with a little open-mouth kissing. And he’s very convivial about some light frottage and implied rimming. He is good and pure and true and a more or less a glitterbomb because isn’t that what an anti-trash prince would do?

So we took this concept and ran with it, beyond all reasonable boundaries. And now elizabeth-twist has taken this phenomenon to its natural and deserved next level. Crack fic. Specifically, origin story crack fic. With glitter.

I won’t say a lot, but I will say that there will likely be collabs and there will likely be glitter based doppleganger crack AU fic. So, yeah. This little article is here for you as half introduction and half dire warning. Something super fucking cracky this way comes. Stay tuned.